Philip K Dick Adaptations

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Are there any PKD fans out there?
What do you think of the various film adaptations of his books/stories?

Blade Runner (Do AndroiRAB Dream of Electric Sheep?)
Paycheck
Minority Report
Screamers (Second Variety)
Imposter
Total Recall (We Can Remember It For You Wholesale)
A Scanner Darkly
Next (The Golden Man)
(did I miss any?)

(I haven't seen Next yet, but it looks pretty poor and a million miles away from the book judging by the trailer.)

And which of his books or stories would you like to see made into films?
 
Whilst not official recognised as a PKD adaptation, Abre Los Ojos (later remade by Hollywood - Vanilla Sky).

The overall plot device and themes of unreality in Abre Los Ojos are very similar to those employed in his novel Ubik.

I'm making my way through a bunch of PKD books that are in my "to read" pile, I find it best, in order to avoid any dissapointment, to think of the books and the movies as two very seperate, unrelated entities.

From a movie perspective, I love Blade Runner and Minority Report. Despite the fantastic theme, Paycheck was just wrong.
 
PKD works which have been sold:

"Time Out of Joint" Purchased by Warner Bros.

"Valis", "Radio Free Albemuth" and "Flow My Tears the Policeman Said" Purchased by independent producer John Alan Simon.


Short story "Adjustement Team" currently under option.
 
Blade Runner - Great movie, and great book, but without much in common.
Paycheck - Weak movie, by a derivative director who didn't understand PK Dick.
Minority Report - OK film, except it throws away the clever resolution of the story and so reverses its meaning.
Screamers - OK film, reasonably close to what wasn't really a great story.
Imposter - Not seen it.
Total Recall - Good film, which also did a good job of capturing Dick preoccupations with the question "What is real?"
A Scanner Darkly - Not seen it.
Next - Not seen it.
 
I agree with you on the whole.

Blade Runner is a classic film, and Do AndroiRAB Dream is a classic novel - but very different.

I agree with you totally on Paycheck. It could have been a much better film if it didn't have such a bad ending.

I loved the film version of Minority Report - although it is quite different from the short story.

Screamers was fairly faithful to the story, and maybe actually better than the story IMO. I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was, because it's not a well known film.

With Imposter they managed to make a thoroughly boring film out of a good short story.

I thought Total Recall was a bit of a daft film, but enjoyable, but then the original story is pretty wild as well. The main regret is that David Cronenberg didn't get to direct it - I believe he wrote several scripts but adandoned the project due to artistic differences with producer Dino De Laurentis.

A Scanner Darkly is extremely faithful to the book with, I think, only one change, and that was approved by PKD's daughter.
 
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